5. Cara
CARA
“Can I get you anything?” Cara asked. “Water, maybe? Coffee?”
“I don’t have time for pleasantries,” Sims snapped. “We need to come up with a plan here. Frankly, I don’t know why I’ve been pawned off on you. Are you new here?”
“No,” Cara said evenly, but she decided not to tell him she had only been with the firm for a year. He would probably insist that that amount of time was being new. She needed him to trust her. “We’re going to have to have a significant conversation here, Mr. Sims…or can I call you Liam?”
He waved a hand. “Liam is fine. It’s not as if you don’t know who I am.”
I don’t. She was tapping his name furiously into her phone, trying to access whatever information she could about what might be going on with him. The one drawback to getting a client dumped on her out of nowhere was that she wasn’t remotely prepared.
Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to find information about Liam Sims. His face was all over the internet.
She stared at her phone screen, startled by the anger she saw there.
He had picked a fight with a younger member of his football team in a bar, according to the article.
The photo a bystander had captured made it look like he was about to start throwing punches, and Cara knew that if she had been in that room with him, she would have been afraid.
I can’t let him see that, though. He can’t imagine that I’m at all intimidated by him.
She set her phone down. “Liam,” she went on.
“I don’t want you to get thirsty while we’re talking.
I’m not sure how long we’re going to be in here, but we don’t want to feel rushed.
I want to come up with the right solution to help you here.
So if you’ll let me, I’ll go and get you something to drink so you’ll be able to relax and settle in. ”
“Listen,” he said firmly. “I’m not here to get comfortable. I’m here to get solutions. Are you caught up on the details of my situation?”
“Yes,” Cara fibbed, hoping he wouldn’t realize that she was getting all her information from headlines.
“Then you understand there’s no time to waste,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve got to make arrangements to be picked up by a new team before things spiral completely out of control. That’s the only way I’ll be able to get the Stingers to take me back.”
“So you’re hoping to return to the Stingers?” she asked.
He slapped a hand against the table. “Obviously I’m going back to the Stingers,” he said.
“This whole thing is being done as a public relations measure. It’s the team trying to save face.
That’s why I need you. Someone has to rehabilitate my image so that the team will want me again.
The best way for us to make that happen is to show them that even if they think they don’t want me, there are plenty of other people—other teams—that do. Do you think you can handle that?”
His tone was so dismissive. This was clearly a man who was used to getting his own way in everything he did. Cara was familiar with his type. She’d had enough experience with bad dates to know how to handle him.
So she leaned forward. “I’ll remind you, Liam, that you’re in my office right now,” she told him.
“You’re here because you need my help. I have other clients.
” A lie, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I don’t need this meeting—you do. So if you don’t want to respect me, you can feel welcome to take your business elsewhere.
I’d like to help you out, but I’m afraid I’m just not open to being spoken to like that.
So it’s up to you. Are you and I going to work together, or are you going to go find someone else who’s willing to go belly-up and give you everything you want? ”
He glared at her for a moment.
She kept her face carefully impassive.
He let out a sigh. “I don’t know where you get the nerve to talk to me like that,” he said.
“You might not think you need me, but that just tells me how new you really are to this firm. I should be meeting with Ward.” He raked his fingers through his blond curls.
Cara was surprised they didn’t tangle and snag, but he must have had some sort of expensive hair treatment to keep them smooth.
“But I don’t have time to argue with you about this,” he went on.
“I do need your help—you’re right about that much.
So if you have an idea for how you’re going to restore my good name, I suggest you share it with me so that we can get to work as quickly as possible. ”
Cara was stuck. The truth of the matter was that she didn’t have any ideas.
How could she, she thought in frustration.
She hadn’t even known about any of this until five minutes ago.
She was all for having a chance to prove herself, but also, it was completely unfair of Alastair to have made this that chance.
How was she supposed to succeed going in blind like this?
She swallowed hard. “Okay,” she said. “Well, I think the first thing for us to do is to lay out exactly what happened.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I thought you knew what had happened.”
“I mean from your perspective,” she said quickly. “If I’m going to spin this, I need your side of the story. What’s already in the press…that’s not the part I need to focus on. I need to know what you say happened, so that I can tell people about it in your words. Don’t you think?”
“It’s about time someone wanted to know that,” he agreed with a sanctimonious little nod.
“Okay.” Cara grabbed a notepad and a pen from the stack that was kept at the end of the table. “So you tell me. What went on that night?”
“The whole thing was a setup,” Liam said sharply. “That kid, Garrett Sandusky…he wanted a fight. He went to that club because he knew I was going to be there.”
She raised her eyebrows. “He knew you would be there?”
“He guessed it, at the very least,” Liam said. “He was trying to make trouble.”
“Is it your usual club, then, or something?” She scribbled usual club on her notepad just to have something to do, even though she wasn’t sure that information was going to be of any use.
“It’s the place where the stars of the team go,” Liam said.
“And that’s how Sandusky’s been acting—like he’s one of the star players, even though it was his very first practice earlier that day.
He thinks he’s the new face of the team.
God’s gift to football. But it wasn’t enough for him to wait for his chance to prove himself on the field.
He had to start things with me right away.
That’s why he was pushing my buttons, trying to get me to fight with him. ”
“Which you did,” Cara pointed out.
She had only meant to make the point, not to make an accusation, but Liam’s face flushed red. “I thought you were going to be different from everyone else,” he snarled. “I thought you were here to take my side.”
“I’m here to listen to your side,” Cara told him firmly.
“It doesn’t actually matter what I think about it, one way or the other.
What matters is that I know what happened so I can control the public perception.
And what did happen is this: You say that Garrett Sandusky tried to provoke you into attacking him, upon which you did attack him. Do I have it right?”
Liam scowled and didn’t answer, which was answer enough in and of itself.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m invested one way or another,” Cara told him.
“Honestly, Liam, it’s a good thing for you that I’m not.
I’m not here to show bias toward you or defensiveness toward this Sandusky person.
My job is to come up with a story that people will believe, that doesn’t stray too much from the truth.
My job is to present the facts to the public in a palatable way. ”
“Well, you can tell them this! Tell them that Sandusky is an attention-seeking upstart who—”
“No, I can’t tell them that,” Cara disagreed. “Not unless you want everyone to see you as a victim, which I don’t think you do. You don’t want the story people to run with to be one in which you are easily manipulated. We can come up with something better than that to present to people.”
“Then what?” Liam demanded. “I’m in a hurry, in case that wasn’t clear to you.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that.
Your hurry is very clear to me,” Cara assured him.
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to compromise how well I do my job, Liam.
We’re going to get this right. I want you to remember that this is what I do for a living.
” He didn’t need to know that he was her very first client.
“I’ll come up with something, and it will be good.
But you don’t want the first thing I think of off the top of my head, just because you’re upset and demanding immediate answers.
You don’t want to be shortchanged like that. ”
“Is this the way you speak to all your clients?” he asked, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Yes,” she said evenly. After all, it was true.
He regarded her quietly for a moment.
“Well,” he said at length, “I guess it’s good to be working with someone who isn’t afraid to speak her mind. Means I can trust you, and that makes a nice change.”
Cara nodded, flooded with relief. “You can definitely trust me to be honest with you,” she told him. “No matter what. I’ll always tell you the truth when it comes to your publicity. You deserve that.”
“And I guess that’s what I really need.” He pressed his hands flat to the table in front of him. “How long do you need to put together a plan?”
She had gotten him on board. Even so, she knew she couldn’t afford to draw this out for long. “Can you give me twenty-four hours?” she asked. “If you can wait that long, I can come up with something.”
“That’s a long time,” Liam murmured.
“Like I said, I’m not going to do this halfway,” she told him firmly. “That’s how long I need to come up with a good pitch for you.”
As a matter of fact, she thought she could probably do with several days. But there was no chance of that. It was difficult enough getting him to agree to give her a single day.
He was nodding slowly, though, and she knew she’d convinced him. “Tomorrow, then,” he said. “I’ll come back to see what you’ve put together.”
He rose to his feet and started toward the door.
Cara was so shocked by everything that had just happened that for a moment she didn’t even think to stand up. But then her manners kicked in and she went to open the door for him. “Thank you for coming in today, Liam,” she said.
For a moment he looked at her, his eyes locking with hers.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Was it just the fact that he was her first real client that had her pulse pounding with excitement?
Or was there something more? Something in the way his eyes held hers, as if the two of them were somehow thinking the same thing?
Before her thoughts could crystalize, he had given her a nod of thanks and walked out the door.